Page 34 of The Compass Series

JAX - THIRTEEN YEARS OLD

I wished Mom wasn’t at work.

I wished Derek wasn’t at football practice.

I wished I wasn’t home alone with Dad. I hated being home alone with Dad.

“For fuck’s sake. Would you stop shaking already? You’re going to scare the damn thing off,” Dad said from behind me. He steadied my hands on the gun. The deer lingered in front of me with its head down, eating something, maybe grass or a branch?

What do deer eat? Fruit? Berries? Do they eat as a family sometimes and carry food home with them? Or are they only supposed to look out for themselves?

“ Steady your grip ,” Dad hissed against my ear. His rough voice snapped me out of my thoughts. The deer looked up and hesitated for a moment. He stretched his neck up and started chewing on a twig from a tree.

Twigs! They eat twigs!

“Look at that beauty, Jax. That’s a solid white-tailed deer.”

My heart pounded hard in my chest, because the deer was a beauty—so why would I kill it?

What had that animal done to me? Nothing.

It didn’t look like it did anything to anyone.

I looked up to Dad and saw how proud he seemed.

I couldn’t think of the last time he looked proud around me, and I didn’t want to let him down.

Dad said real men go hunting, and I wanted to be a real man like him.

Derek was off at football practice and Mom was working late at the diner, so it was just Dad and me at home in our woods.

I wasn’t even sure we were allowed to hunt in June, but Dad told me it was his land so he was allowed to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

My eyes focused in on the deer. It was becoming harder and harder for me to breathe. It felt like someone had put their hand in my chest, grabbed my heart, and promised to only let go if I made a choice.

Be a man or be a pussy.

The animal stood there, minding its own business as I stalked it in the shadows made by the bushes.

“I don’t want to,” I whispered, my shaking returning. It wasn’t fair . The deer hadn’t done anything. We had food in our house. We didn’t need it. We weren’t hungry. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t hungry… “Please no,” I softly said again, maybe to myself, maybe to God.

“Come on. Derek killed three all on his own last year. If you don’t do it, you can be damn sure you’re not going to camp later this week.

Don’t be a little shit,” Dad said, threatening me with the one thing he knew would hurt me.

I didn’t want to miss camp with Kennedy. I’d been waiting all year for it.

When the deer looked back down to the ground to find more twigs, I lowered my gun. I didn’t know if Dad saw it, but right behind the whitetail was a baby deer. Her doe eyes were wide, and she looked scared. My eyes filled with tears. I can’t do it.

“Fuckin’ A, Jax,” Dad said before lowering himself to the ground with his gun that was twice as big as mine, if not three times bigger.

He zoned in on the deer. I felt my stomach flip and a nasty taste of vomit settled in my throat.

I did my best to push it back down, swallowing hard.

I stood and almost lost my balance from standing too fast. My eyes locked with the baby deer who seemed to be invisible to my dad. I shook my head back and forth.

I can’t!

I can’t let it happen! I can’t let the deer die!

In a panic, I started waving my arms and shouting.

“No! Run! Run !” I screamed, the back of my throat feeling strained and sore.

The deer looked alarmed and started to move.

I jumped up and down, trying to flag it to run and never look back, but it was too late.

Dad’s gun fired and the deer only made it a few feet before it fell over to the ground.

My eyes moved to where the baby deer was standing a few minutes ago. She was gone, now.

“What the hell, kid?” Dad yelled at me. He stood and slapped me on the back of my head. “Pack up your shit and wait here.” I listened to him mutter under his breath about me.

He walked toward the deer.

The dead deer.

The dead deer that Dad killed.

I bent over and proceeded to throw up my breakfast and lunch, and probably some of last night’s dinner.

I hated this. I hated hunting. I hated the deer for being stupid and not running fast enough.

I hated Derek for being better than me. I hated Mom for not being home when Dad dragged me to the woods.

I hated Dad for not liking me the way I was. I hated myself for letting him down.

Maybe I hated myself a little more than anything else.

“You shouldn’t have made him do that,” Mom scolded later at the house as I wrapped my arms around the top of the staircase.

She and Dad stood in the living room pacing back and forth.

They’d been fighting about me for the past hour.

Mom had come home and found me crying into my pillow, and she’d embraced me tightly, telling me everything would be okay.

“It’s a damn shame that he’s like this! His brother shot his first deer when he was much younger than Jax!”

“But he’s not Jax,” she swore. “Jax is different. He’s sensitive.”

“He’s a sissy.”

“Don’t talk about my son like that,” she ordered with a very stern voice.

“Oh, so now he’s your son?” Dad shot back.

“He is when you treat him like this.” Mom’s voice cracked and she crossed her arms, looking down at the carpet. “You know what I mean, Cole.”

“No, I don’t think I do.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s funny, Derek isn’t even my son by blood, but he feels more like mine than my own damn kid.”

“Don’t say things like that. Plus, it’s different. Derek is way older than Jax. That’s not a fair comparison.”

Dad grumbled something I couldn’t hear then pushed his hands through his hair. “Unless you want to make him more of a bitch than he already is, let me handle raising the boy to be a boy. He’s a pussy because you keep babying him, Elizabeth. This is your doing.”

“I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to listen to you talk down about Jax because he doesn’t take up the same hobbies as you.”

“His head is always in a book! He cries over fucking fishing because he thinks the fish is being harmed! I mean, fuck, he cried during The Lion King last week because Mufasa fucking died! Boys don’t cry over The Lion King . He’s a weak little shit, and you’re lucky I’m here to man him up.”

“He doesn’t need to man up. He’s perfect the way he is.”

“No. He’s weak. You’re weakening him. Just watch—watch him never achieve anything because of your mothering. You’re ruining him.”

They kept fighting, and I felt awful about it. A knot settled in my stomach. I headed back to my bedroom and cried into my pillow some more.

“Stop crying, loser,” I sobbed to myself. “Just be a man.”

Mom and Dad fought more and more about me. They never fought about my older brother, maybe because he was more like Dad. Maybe it was because he was good at sports, maybe because he was strong.

Strong.

I wanted to be strong. I needed to be strong.

“You okay, sweetheart?” Mom asked, peering into my bedroom. It was already past my bedtime, but I couldn’t sleep. My head and heart hurt too much to sleep that night.

“He hates me,” I whispered.

Mom walked over to me and crawled into bed beside me. She wrapped her arms around my body and held me close to her. “Your father doesn’t hate you, Jax. He’s just…” She took a deep breath. “He was raised differently, that’s all. He thinks certain things make a person a man, but he’s wrong.”

“I’m not a man.”

“You’re right, you’re not.” She leaned forward and kissed my nose. “You’re a handsome boy who’s just learning about yourself, that’s all.”

“But I want to be strong like Dad and Derek. I want to be better than me.”

“Strong? Jax Kilter, you’re the strongest boy I know,” she promised, nuzzling her nose to mine. “You know what makes you strong?”

“What?”

“Your heartbeats. The way you love animals and don’t want anything bad to happen to them.

The way you say please and thank you. The way you hold doors open for people.

The way you laugh out loud when reading a funny book and reread the parts out loud so I can laugh, too.

The way you share your favorite jokes with me.

The way you love your mama.” She smiled.

“You might be the strongest boy I’ve ever known, and one day you’re going to be the strongest man, too.

Don’t let your father get to you. You’re not any less of a man just because you aren’t like him or your brother. ”

I wanted to believe her, but it was hard.

“Do you know you’re my best friend, Jax?” she asked.

I knew. I figured she just said it because she had to, but she was my best friend, too.

Mom was my only friend, other than Kennedy. She was always looking out for me, even when I knew she wasn’t. No matter what, Mom was always there for me.

“I love you, Mom.”

“I love you, too, Jax. Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“What would you think if you, Derek, and me got our own place?”

My eyes widened. “Without Dad there?”

She frowned and nodded her head. I saw tears fill her eyes.

“Yeah. I think it would be good for us. I’m getting my landscaping business up and running soon, and you can be my righthand man to help me out.

We can start a new life without your father.

Of course, he’d always be in your life, Jax, but we’d just have our own place to stay. ”

“You’re leaving Cole?”

I looked up to see Derek standing in the doorway with panic in his eyes.

Mom stood from the bed and walked over to him. “Derek, nothing has been decided yet and?—”

“You can’t leave him! You can’t do this. I already lost a dad, and you can’t make me do it again. I’m not going. I’m staying here with Cole.”

“Calm down, Derek. Nothing has been deci?—”

“It’s because of him, isn’t it?” he asked, gesturing toward me. “It’s because he’s a freak. I know that’s why you and Cole fight all the time.”

“Derek!” Mom hissed. “Don’t you dare speak about your brother like that!”

“Why not? You know it’s true. You treat him like he’s not a weirdo when he is. Cole’s right—he is a little bitch.”

Mom gripped Derek by the arm, not tightly, but firmly. “Apologize to your brother right now.”

“Why? I’m just telling the truth.”

“Derek,” she scolded, but he didn’t let up. Mom dropped her hold on his arm and pointed out the door. “Go to your bedroom, and don’t for a second think about going to football practice for the rest of the week. You’re grounded.”

“What? No way! We have a game on Friday, and if I’m not at practices, I can’t play.” He groaned as his face reddened in anger.

“You should have thought about that before speaking about your brother that way.”

“This fucking sucks,” he muttered, stomping away in irritation.

“Make that two weeks!” Mom hollered. Shortly after that, Derek’s bedroom door slammed shut.

Mom sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“He’s right,” I said. “It’s all because of me.”

Mom walked over to me, bent down so we were eye to eye, and placed her hands on my cheeks.

“Jaxson Eli Kilter, none of this—and I mean none—has anything to do with you. Your father and your brother are wrong. You are perfect the way you are. Now get some rest.” She kissed my forehead and tucked me in.

She walked away and was about to shut off the light, but I called out.

“Leave it on?” I asked, feeling stupid for still being afraid of the dark.

“Night light,” she said, gesturing toward the wall. “Remember? It’s never dark with your night light.”

I nodded slowly. “But keep the door open?” I asked.

“Will do, baby,” she promised. She shut off the light.

I tried my best to remember what Mom had told me, but it was hard. Dad hadn’t spoken to me in days, since I refused to shoot the deer. The last thing he’d called me was a pansy before he stopped talking to me.

Whenever I walked into a room, Dad walked out. Whenever I said hi, his mouth stayed shut. Whenever I did anything, he made me feel invisible.

Invisible.

I’m invisible.